The Wrong Way to Do Things
How Not to Win the Hearts and Minds of the American Public
I just finished watching the Paramount miniseries Waco an Waco: The Aftermath. My stomach is turning right now and I’m a little emotional, so you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t include citations and other scholarly nomenclature. Someone once told me that I’m best when I speak from the heart. We’ll see if that’s true or not. But I definitely have something to say and I’m definitely going to say it.
On February 28, 1993 the ATF raided the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, Texas. They claimed that they were there because the Branch Davidians, led by Vernon Howell, AKA David Koresh, were in possession of illegal firearms. That may or may not be true. Regardless of what the facts are, it shouldn’t be.
I believe there should be no such thing as an illegal firearm anywhere in the US and that human beings have the right to possess weapons of war. The Constitution agrees with me. It grants Congress the right to issue Writs of Marque and Reprisal, which grant private vessels the right to conduct war with the permission of the US government by using weapons of war including cannon. The Battles of Lexington and Concord, regardless of what a liberal will tell you, was not fought over muskets. The British were out to seize cannon from the people of Massachusetts to keep them from rebelling.
People from both sides of the skirmish at Mount Carmel claim that the other side shot first. We’ll probably never know the truth. I’m not exactly okay with that, but I don’t think that there’s anything we can do to change it. If there’s anything you learn going to school for history, it’s that the document (or in this case video) that you really want to figure out what happened either never existed or has been lost. That’s the way the real world works. So I’ll just go with what I know.
I remember watching the Waco thing on TV. It went down at the end of my sophomore year of high school (that’s tenth grade/two years before I graduate if you’re from outside the US. I’m told that people from other countries don’t use the same nomenclature) and my father was an avid news watcher. That’s where I get it from. I was working close to full time hours at the age of sixteen on top of going to school and I didn’t see all of the coverage, but I saw enough and what I saw pissed me off.
If there was any word about Koresh being a child molester at the time of the siege, I hadn’t heard it. That, from what I can remember at least, came out later. I’d have had no problem shooting the man myself for that, although I’d have given him a trial first. What I remember (and the lesson that many people took from that day and the fifty one days that followed) was that a Democrat president (Bill Clinton) decided to shoot up a group of people that it viewed as being White Christians with guns and therefore a threat. The US government had done the same thing at Ruby Ridge not long before.
There are similarities and differences between Waco and Ruby Ridge and you could do a doctoral dissertation about them. The one definitive thing that I’m here to speak on today is this: The US government, in the form of the ATF and the FBI killed children. Those children had been accused of no crime, never mind being convicted. They got in the way. That’s all there was to it. And yes, I’m aware that Sammy Weaver fired at federal agents. Those agents were in plain clothes and did not identify themselves. If they had bothered to show ID Sammy may very well still be here today.
The agents who led and carried about both sieges deserve blame for what they did. Even if they had a problem with the adults, they had no right to murder babies. Those kids had done nothing wrong. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time and were killed by federal agents who, in the best case scenario, made some seriously bad decisions.
On April 19, 1993 the Branch Davidian compound burned. Dozens of people were killed. The government claims it was a mass suicide. Surviving Branch Davidians say that there were no plans of mass suicide, I find myself believing the survivors over a bunch of feds who may very well have been saying what they needed to to cover the backsides, but I could be wrong. I watched that compound burn on live TV in my living room. I’ll never forget it. I never thought that something like that could happen here. Not in my country. The United States was too civilized for that.
Had I stopped watching after the first miniseries, this essay would probably end there. But I didn’t. Watching Waco: The Aftermath was a kick in the teeth as well. I’m not going to go over the courtroom drama. There was enough of that and the defendants got hosed. Fedgov needed some civilians to take a fall for what happened and three Branch Davidians fit the bill. That is honestly not all that unexpected the police (or in this case the ATF and FBI) always try to blame the victim when they shoot someone they shouldn’t have. Look up the precedents if you don’t believe me.
No, what set me off and got me writing was the Timothy McVeigh subplot they included. McVeigh, if you don’t remember, set a truck bomb off at the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City. A hundred and sixty-eight people were killed and eight hundred were injured when that bomb went off and a buttload of them were kids. Timothy McVeigh was later convicted of committing the bombing and executed for his crime. So be it. As far as I’m concerned, he had it coming.
And, unlike Waco, I’ve been to Oklahoma City. I’ve been to the memorial for the bombing victims there. There is a courtyard full of chairs there, one for each victim of the bombing. I held the hand of my then-twenty one month old daughter while I tried to explain to her why there were little chairs there. That there were kids caught up in the bombing that would always sleep and never play. I’ll never forget that feeling or the heat of the tears in my eyes while I tried to explain something to a toddler that didn’t really make sense to me. A tree still stands there, blackened and stained on one side by soot and blast damage. It was a horrifying site to behold.
The fact that Tim McVeigh’s terrorist group (and yes, the OKC bombing was politically motivated violence committed by a non-state actor and “politically motivated violence committed by a non-state actor” is the literal definition of terrorism.) is located only a couple hours from where I was living at the time of the bombing was appalling. I want nothing to do with that guy, ever. He’s like a real life Freddy Krueger, only worse.
And so I guess the point of this post is this: If you want Americans to support what you’re doing, don’t commit the indiscriminate slaughter of children. If you want US citizens to believe in your cause, don’t burn down buildings full of kids or drop entire office buildings down on their heads. And that applies whether you’re part of the government or fighting against it. That’s it. That’s my whole point. Don’t target children. And God help you if you do. Because God knows I won’t.
But yes, your main point "Do not harm children!!" Is very, very, true. Nothing will turn us against you faster, no matter who you are.
The fact that the feds destroyed all of the physical evidence so fast is all I need to know, to know that they shot first. When the cops destroy evidence, they are wrong and the working assumption must be that the destroyed evidence would have proven their guilt.
I was working from a home office in Claremore, Oklahoma when that all when down and I watched the whole thing in horror as is unfolded.
It sent my mind back to the coverage of the siege of wounded knee when I was a child.
These are contributing factors to why I tend to lean toward the side that believes that the ATF and FBI are completely irredeemable agencies that must be excised from our republic. They seem to to more harm than good.